Here are some Foursquare DO’s:
- Ensure your company office is a location within Foursquare
- Encourage existing employees to “check-in” and leave tips about why they like working at your company or add general info like where reception is located etc to help candidates coming in for an interview
- Have a sign at your reception or recruiting event reminding people to check into Foursquare – if the user chooses to connect this update to Facebook & Twitter, you can reach a wide audience with your brand name. Remember birds of a feather flock together so you are likely reaching a very targeted audience by candidates pushing their update to their networks.
- Leave simple tips targeted to an audience in relevant locations & people may actually check your tips/click the links within to see the jobs or learn about your employment brand. Ensure recruiters on campus for events or interviews of student Ambassadors are checking in across campus. Some ideas are:
o Check in at key locations throughout campus that your target students might check in at and write tips about your opportunities encouraging students to check out your company’s jobs or industry relevant tips that peak their interest to find out more about you (locations: Career center, industry relevant club meeting locations/offices, faculty buildings etc)
o Leave tips at the university career fair driving people to your booth and making sure your specific booth is set up as a check-in location on foursquare
o Do candidates get a giveaway by showing their “check-in” to a recruiter at a campus recruiting event? Make sure you answer “what’s in it for me” when asking someone to do something. They should be rewarded for sharing information about their experience with you with their networks.
- Ensure if you are using Foursquare you also have a company Facebook profile & Twitter account. As users can push their foursquare updates to these other sites, you want to be sure you have profiles on these websites as candidates may click through to see more information about your company when seeing a friend’s update in their Twitter or Facebook newsfeed. You better be on there if they are looking! Ensure you have an active profile on these sites or you will be left behind.
- Capitalize on the growing “check-in culture:” At an information session, have a call to action within your presentation for attendees to “check-in” to Foursquare. Make it interactive by asking them to read out a tip, find a photo, write a tip, ask a question about your company, or provide feedback about the presentation to win prizes or have the opportunity to meet the speaker after the presentation before other attendees.
- Work with Foursquare to create "specials" as these are PUSHED to users versus tips, which users have to click on to see the content within a tip. According to Foursquare Business Platforms help you “attract new customers or reward your most loyal ones by offering … mobile coupons, prizes or discounts – which are presented to users when they check in at or near your venue. Specials create extra enticement to get customers to stop by – think 20% off a meal, a free dessert, or even a reserved parking spot for your most loyal customers. Specials can be tailored to fit your needs."
o Set up recruiting “specials” – do people who unlock this special at an event automatically get a phone interview with a recruiter? Can they come and get a day in the life experience working in your office? Do they get to attend a special recruiting event?
DON’Ts
- Don’t be afraid of this medium because it is REALLY growing and you don’t want to be left behind
- Don’t trash your competitor on this medium as you don’t want to start that battle/ Don’t check in at your competitors office or leave tips about your company as they will just do the same to you
- Don’t forget to check out what your competition is doing on this platform. Check into their company and see what people are saying
This is the year I am really challenging my employment branding team to use this medium due to its huge growth and for the simple fact that millennials love being rewarded for everyday behaviour. I see future posts on this topic as I learn more about the medium by challenging the status quo and have learnings to share with you – hopefully creating some big wins but also learning from those mistakes that are bound to happen when trailblazing.
Are you using Foursquare as part of your recruiting strategy or overall brand marketing? If YES, what are you doing? If NO, do I tempt you to start!?
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I think that services like Foursquare are what Twitter/Facebook were 1-2 years ago. It's definitely still ahead of the curve to be using this for recruiting, and I actually think that there is greater chance of mass adoption for a feature like Facebook Places, as it's already integrated into something that virtually every student is using/doing.
ReplyDeleteIn general, there is huge potential for using location based tools for recruiting. Maybe not so much for actually soliciting applications but rather for branding in general. The best execution I've seen was something called "Coke Village" - http://www.canneszions.com/coca-cola-village-promarket-group/
Coke created a dream village for a select group of youth. Youth then 'checked in' at spots throughout the village (the pool, the restaurant, etc) and were able to instantly upload photos of themselves in village, as well as tag all their friends. If you go through to that link, you'll see that the results were amazing.
From a recruitment point of view - employers that host open houses, for example, can spread the reach of an open house by encouraging students to check in at different areas of their office (aka on-site fitness facility, cool labs, etc). this would be instantly shared with their FB (or other) friends, meaning that an in-person event for a handful of students is suddenly reaching thousands.
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ReplyDeleteLauren - totally agree that the Coke Village is an amazing example of RFID bracelets that are registered and hooked up to attendee's social media accounts so when they "like" something throughout the village, it updated their network. It is such a great example of a marketing campaign and the use/power of Facebook. I love your points about Facebook Places taking over the Foursquare Market - facebook places is SO SO new (literally under 10 days old) but, you are right, with the existing 500 million Facebook users, it has huge potential to check on quickly and take over other platfomrs (like potentially foursquare). Love your ideas here and will playing a VERY close eye on Facebook Places - lucky for me, all of my above ideas can be used for Facebook places OR Foursquare.
ReplyDeleteThanks for taking the time to read my post and write such an AWESOME comment!